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CNN senior international correspondent Nic Robertson explains what’s happening, and why.

What are we talking about?

The Taliban have opened an office in Qatar with an eye toward beginning talks there with Afghan and U.S. officials to end the fighting in Afghanistan. U.S. officials are expected to meet Thursday with Taliban representatives in Doha, but Afghanistan said Wednesday it won’t participate.

What’s gone wrong?

Taliban talks announced

Who’s saying what?

Karzai says there are “contradictions between acts and statements of the U.S. in regard to the peace process.” He says that the Taliban are emphasizing a continuation of the fighting and that “foreign powers” — read Pakistan — “are behind the opening of the Taliban office” in Qatar.

The Taliban, which angered Afghan officials by flying their flag and provocatively calling themselves the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, say they’re “fighting to bring an end to the occupation” by NATO forces.

Is the peace process over?

It’s unlikely — everyone has something to gain from a successful negotiation. The United States would get a dignified exit for most of its forces and an agreement on a long-term presence in Afghanistan. Karzai would get the legacy he craves as a peacemaker, and the Taliban would get a say in how the country is run.

President Barack Obama said we should expect “bumps in the road” and warned that this would be “a difficult process.” And this is not the first time Karzai has stalled things.

But this is not a good start. Compromise seems to be in short supply.

What about the killing of 4 U.S. soldiers by the Taliban?

It is worrying that this came hours after the Taliban statement Tuesday. Is it coincidence or backlash? Some Taliban field commanders are unhappy with their representatives in Qatar, and behind the scenes, those close to the Taliban fear an uptick in violence near Kabul.

There’s a risk that hard-liners will undermine leaders they don’t trust in these talks. That’s true in most peace negotiations. Some think representatives in Qatar will do Pakistan’s bidding and want out of the fight now. Others may fight long after the majority agrees to peace.

Is there a grand bargain to be had?

International representatives close to the process in the past have told me not to rule it out. A bargain, where the Taliban accept U.S. bases in Afghanistan beyond the 2014 pullout date and where they agree not to attack them, is possible. The same people also say don’t hold your breath, this has been a long time coming.

What are the demands?

The Taliban must renounce al Qaeda. In the past, the Taliban have demanded that all foreign troops leave the country and have asked for specific percentages of representation in the Afghan political and military structures. They also want their prisoners released from U.S.-controlled detention.

Taliban officials have said in the past that theirs is a national struggle and that al Qaeda has an international agenda. However, they would take support where they could get it. The demand to renounce al Qaeda has been made to the Taliban since their first tentative “talks” in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, in 2008.

Which Taliban are we talking about?

The Taliban of Mullah Omar, the Afghan leader or the Emir of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan before September 2001. His right-hand man, Tayyab Agha, heads the Taliban mission in Qatar. Other principal Taliban and Afghan opposition factions include the Haqqani faction, the TTP or Pakistani Mehsud faction and the Hekmatyar faction in the North East.

Those close to Mullah Omar’s Taliban say the vast majority of Taliban support him.

International representatives close to the process say that while that may be true, powerful groups like the Haqqanis could continue an insurgency even if Mullah Omar makes peace with Kabul.

Why would the Taliban talk now?

The civil war that the Taliban had all but won in 2001 has gone into remission with the presence of international forces. If the Taliban were to fight for the whole country again, they may not do so well.

The civil war bubbles beneath the surface, and should it resurface, the former northern warlords who have profited from the U.S. presence would make a Taliban fight for supremacy much harder. In short, they may get a better deal at the table than on the battlefield.

Why has it taken so much time to get talks going?

Karzai on several occasions felt bypassed by backdoor U.S. conversations with the Taliban in Qatar. He reportedly blocked progress. The Taliban also walked out on talks when Taliban prisoners at the U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay were not released as they had expected.

Where is Mullah Omar, and why’s that important?

He is widely believed to be in Pakistan, unable to move freely without Pakistan’s approval. That’s what his supporters believe, although Pakistan has denied it. Pakistan wants a say in Afghanistan’s future. If Afghanistan drifted toward Pakistan’s archenemy India, its sphere of influence would be upset.

What influence will Pakistan have on the talks?

Agha, Mullah Omar’s representative, could not have established an office in Qatar and be in a position to talk to Afghans and Americans without Pakistan’s permission. That’s the understanding of some in the Taliban, at least.

Karzai and U.S. officials have long accused Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI, of supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan. The ISI denies that.

What hiccups can we expect?

Karzai says the next talks must be in Afghanistan. That is unlikely to sit well with Pakistan.

But just to get to this point has been very difficult. For the talks to work, all sides will need to be committed.

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Obama’s latest proposals on nuclear stockpiles come two years after New START — an agreement between the United States and Russia — went into effect. New START, which stands for Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, calls for each country to limit its nuclear warhead arsenal to 1,550 by the year 2018.

If fully implemented, his proposals on Wednesday would reduce both stockpiles by another one-third — to roughly 1,000 warheads for each country.

“At the same time, we’ll work with our NATO allies to seek bold reductions in U.S. and Russian tactical weapons in Europe,” he said.

After New START was ratified, Obama ordered a detailed internal analysis of U.S. nuclear needs and what it would take to deter other countries from attacking, the White House said.

Obama has also said the United States will only consider the use of nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States or its allies and partners.

A White House fact sheet released after the speech called Obama’s proposals “new guidance that aligns U.S. nuclear policies to the 21st century security environment.”

Obama’s guidance directed the Pentagon to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in the overall U.S. security strategy, and narrow the focus of nuclear strategy to deterrence, the White House document said.

The proposals drew immediate criticism from the Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon of California, who said in a statement that Russia already failed to adhere to existing arms-reduction agreements.

“The president must make clear to (Russian) President (Vladimir) Putin that the United States will not allow itself or its allies to be bullied by Russia or to allow that state to ignore its arms control obligations,” McKeon’s statement said.

Pressuring Iran and North Korea

The United States will continue working to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, with specific pressure on Iran and North Korea, a senior administration official said.

Obama also will participate in the 2014 Nuclear Security Summit in The Hague, Netherlands, the official said. The president announced Wednesday in his speech that he will host a Nuclear Security Summit in 2016 to work with other countries in securing nuclear materials and preventing nuclear terrorism.

Nuclear deterrence could restrain N. Korea, Iran

Wednesday’s speech took place amid a festive atmosphere at Brandenburg Gate, where Obama faced the East in contrast to Reagan’s appearance when the Berlin Wall still divided the city.

While the crowd was much smaller than the estimated 200,000 who jammed the area in 2008 to hear then Sen. Obama speak, people waved U.S. and German flags and regularly erupted in cheers and applause.

Near the front was Gail Halvorsen, known as the Candy Bomber for being the first to drop candy to kids during the U.S. airlift of 1948-49 that supplied West Berlin following a Soviet blockade.

Obama paid tribute to that moment, noting that the 92-year-old Halvorsen, who he called “the original candy bomber,” was present.

“We could not be prouder of him,” Obama said as Halvorsen stood and waved. The president added: “I hope I look that good, by the way, when I’m 92.”

CNN’s Deirdre Walsh and Holly Yan contributed to this report.

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On June 21, 1982, almost 31 years ago, Prince William was born. Prince Charles and Princess Diana are shown leaving the Lindo Wing, at St. Mary’s Hospital in London. Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, plans to give birth to her baby at the same hospital.

On display at the main gates of Buckingham Palace in London is the announcement that Diana gave birth to a son, William, at 9.03 p.m. on June 21, 1982. Charles was with her at St. Mary’s Hospital for the birth of their first child, who weighed 7lbs 1.5 ozs and had blue eyes.

Charles and Diana are photographed on September 16, 1984, following the birth of their second son, Prince Harry, at St. Mary’s Hospital.

Catherine attends a garden party in the grounds of Buckingham Palace hosted by Queen Elizabeth II on May 22, 2013.

William and Catherine arrive for a service of celebration to mark the 60th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation at Westminster Abbey on June 4, 2013.

President and CEO of Princess Cruises Alan Buckelew escorts Catherine stands next to an image taken of herself by Getty photographer Chris Jackson after a ship’s naming ceremony at Ocean Terminal on June 13, 2013 in Southampton. This was Catherine’s final public appearance before she gives birth.

Catherine is photographed on the balcony of Buckingham Palace during the annual Trooping the Color Ceremony on June 15, 2013 in London.

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Pregnant Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, names cruise ship

Magazine defends photos of pregnant, bikini-clad Duchess of Cambridge

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Corsair Carbide Air 540 Review

Manufacturer: Corsair
UK price (as reviewed): £117 (inc VAT)
US price (as reviewed): $140 (ex TAX)

Dual-chamber cases are nothing new. In fact, examples such as YeongYang’s cube server case is over 10 years old. As such, while it might sound harsh, a lot of the hype surrounding Corsair’s new Carbide Air 540 that dubbed it as out-of-the-box thinking is simply down to inexperience and over-excitement. However, there’s definitely something appealing about these types of cases that gets you all enthusiastic about the prospect of building a system into one.

The huge towers doing the rounds at the moment are just that – huge, and we’ve seen many instances where they literally don’t fit under a desk. By splitting a cube case into two compartments, you essentially gain the best of two worlds – enough space to build a tidy system with ample space for water-cooling hardware, and also a relatively compact case, at least in terms of depth and height.

Of course there’s no point just copying a design that was around ten years ago because it simply won’t work. These days you need SSD mounts, 140mm fan mounts and decent cable routing for starters. For this reason, Corsair has of course applied some very modern tweaks to the Carbide Air 540 that make it very much a case your modern enthusiast will be interested in. We’re particularly keen on putting Corsair’s claim of it being ‘the best air-cooling case in the world’ to the test.

The Carbide Air 540′s bulk makes it look deceptively large, when in fact it’s only a couple of centimetres taller and deeper than the BitFenix Prodigy. It’s the fact that the PSU and 5.25in mounts have been shifted to the second chamber that meant Corsair could shrink the other dimensions of the case, yet there’s still loads of room to spare inside. The front panel definitely grew on us as we played with it for a few hours, too – it looks rather spartan, but in a ruggedly good way.

The front is as plastic as the inside of your average Asian-made family car, but the lop-sided features, including a huge top-to-bottom grille and front panel mean you instantly forget about this, especially as the case in general is extremely well-made and solid – there’s no rattling here. The only real issue cosmetically-speaking is the rotated 5.25in bays – the best thing to install here would be two bay reservoirs perhaps catering for two water-cooling loops in two coolant colours. Of course not all of us can be as extravagant, but it’s unlikely fan controllers or optical drives are going to look particularly attractive, or be all that practical, here.

By far our favourite feature is the huge side window and before you ask – which someone always does – no the 5.25in bays aren’t visible because they’re in the other chamber. Hooray! Coupled with the fact the PSU is hidden in the rear chamber, the Carbide Air 540 really is a tidy system-lover’s delight, because all that will be on show is the motherboard, graphics card and any cooling gear you have installed.

While the case’s design results in some features of its own, others are a little bare. There are two USB 3.0 ports, but that’s it – no fan control, no lighting and only a front dust filter. At a little over £100, you’re still getting a lot of case for your money and once again Corsair probably has the excuse that you should be considering one of its all-in-one liquid coolers with their fan control software instead.

However, little niggles like the lack of a dust filter on the bottom of the case, which has large vents beneath the hard disk mounts, and cable ties rather than anything more lavish to secure cables in the otherwise excellent cable routing system, are flies in the ointment of what is so far a very promising case.

Specifications

• Dimensions (mm) 332 x 415 x 458 (W x D x H)
• Material Steel, plastic
• Available colours Black (reviewed)
• Weight 8kg
• Front panel Power, reset, 2 x USB 3, stereo, microphone
• Drive bays 2 x external 5.25in, 2 x internal 3.5in/2.5in, 4 x internal 2.5in
• Form factor(s) EATX, ATX, micro-ATX
• Cooling 2 x 140mm/3 x 120mm front fan mounts (2 x 140mm fans included), 1 x 140mm rear fan mount (fan included), 2 x 120mm/140mm top fan mounts (fan not included)
• CPU cooler clearance 170mm
• Maximum graphics card length 320mm
• Maximum PSU length 200mm

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AMD Seattle is due to arrive next year, but not look like a lightbulb.

With its 2013-2014 server roadmap, AMD has revealed that its first 64-bit ARM-based server chips, codenamed Seattle, are set to be sampled in Q1 2014 and ready for production in the second half of 2014.

While the chips were first announced last year, the roadmap has shed light on previously unknown details about them. Seattle will be based on ARM’s Cortex-A57 cores and a 28nm manufacturing process, and will be made available first as an 8-core CPU and secondly as a 16-core one. As AMD is keen to emphasise, upon its release, Seattle will be the industry’s first such server system on chip. It will also be the first AMD processor to utilise its Freedom Fabric technology, acquired in its buyout of SeaMicro last year.

AMD expects its new chip family to ‘provide category-leading throughput as well as setting the bar in performance-per-watt’ and to ‘set the bar in power-efficient server compute’. It also claims that it will outperform the recently announced AMD Opteron X-Series of processors, based on AMD’s own Jaguar cores, by between two and four times, and expects Seattle to reach speeds of at least 2GHz.

As well as 128GB DRAM support, Seattle will deliver ‘extensive offload engines for better power efficiency and reduced CPU loading, server calibre encryption, and compression and legacy networking including integrated 10GbE.’

Details were also unveiled new about the company’s Berlin and Warsaw processors. The former will be available as both a CPU and APU and based on a set of four of AMD’s upcoming 28nm Steamroller cores. Berlin is designed to offer almost eight times the gigaflops per-watt of the Opteron 6386SE processor and consequently offer a large rack density. It will also be the first server APU built on AMD’s Heterogeneous System Architecture, which AMD claims ‘makes [GPGPU] programming as easy as C++.’

Finally, Warsaw is AMD’s next-generation offering in its two and four socket enterprise platforms, and as such is optimised for heavily virtualised enterprise workloads. Set to supercede the Opteron 6300 family, the Warsaw CPUs will be based on 12 or 16 of AMD’s existing 32nm Piledriver cores and provide ‘significantly improved performance-per-watt’ over said family while also providing an apparently seamless migration path from one to the other.

Both Berlin and Warsaw are expected to be available in the first half of 2014.

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Jen-Hsun Huang, Nvidia CEO – Photo: Reuters/Stephen Lam

Nvidia has announced it will begin licensing its graphics technologies to other companies, allowing for the likes of Apple and Samsung to incorporate previously protected technologies into their products.

The move is a new approach for the company as it tries to further take advantage of the burgeoning mobile market, following its modest success with its Tegra line of mobile processors.

“The bottom line is the world has changed and we’re expanding our business model to serve markets that we historically could not serve by selling chips alone,” Nvidia CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang said.

Although Nvidia has already made an entrance to the mobile processor space, the new licensing deal will enable the company to gain revenue from other mobile processor manufacturers such as Apple, Qualcomm and Samsung. While this route would produce much lower return per chip, it is likely to be a more stable business model.

The move will, however, put Nvidia into direct competition with a couple of established players: ARM and Imagination Technologies. Both British-based outfits already license mobile-oriented graphics technologies to most of the key players in the market, with Imagination Technologies also having backing from Apple and Intel who hold significant stakes in the company.

ARM of course licenses its mobile CPU technology to Nvidia – and every others significant mobile processor manufacturer – so it will be interesting to see if the two continue to work together in the longer term.

For the time being Nvidia has recently launched Tegra 4, which is debuting in the company’s mobile game console, Shield. Longer term it will also be integrating LTE features on upcoming versions of Tegra, making them compatible with so-called 4G networks. Currently their lack of LTE technology is harming Nvidia, Intel and other chipmakers as they try to secure design wins. In the 4G space, Qualcomm is dominating the market.

Despite the positive long term prospects for going the licensing route, Huang said that Nvidia’s revenue from licensing would trail that from chip sales for a long time, but that gross margins would improve as the company wins more royalties.

Source: Reuters

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In 1994, before his return to Apple, Steve Jobs expected to be forgotten.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Eric Mack/CNET)

In 1994, while at Next, Steve Jobs gave a 20-minute interview to the Silicon Valley Historical Association (SVHA) in which he spoke about his legacy. Interestingly, at that point, he expected that he and his accomplishments would be more or less forgotten within a few decades.

A clip from that interview has just been posted to YouTube for the first time this week to help promote the SVHA’s 60-minute documentary on Jobs, “Steve Jobs: Visionary Entrepreneur.”

“All the work that I’ve done in my life will be obsolete by the time I’m 50,” Jobs, still shy of his 40th birthday, says in the video below. “The Apple 2 is obsolete now, Apple 1s were obsolete many years ago, the Macintosh is on the verge of becoming obsolete in the next few years.”

Remember, this is Jobs speaking before his return to Apple to turn it around and build it into one of the most valuable enterprises ever. Now, almost 20 years later, we’ve just seen the latest iteration of the Macintosh OS, and a working Apple 1 just sold at auction for more than half a million dollars.

Lots of innovators are forgotten by history, but it seems that Jobs has already joined the historical vanguard, drawing constant comparisons to names like Edison and Ford. The saddest thing is that the opposite turned out to be true, and the usefulness of Jobs’ many creations will likely outlive the man himself by decades.

Watch the clip of the 1994 interview below:

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It was a slow week in rumorland, but a couple stories managed to make their way onto the scene.

HTC’s long-rumored HTC One Mini is back, now with leaked pictures and specs. The miniature version of HTC’s flagship would be thinner, shorter, but still sporting that unibody aluminum design. And now it’ll fit into your pocket!

Samsung could also be hopping aboard the mini train, possibly announcing a
Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini at an event in London on Thursday. This version of the Galaxy will have a 4.3-inch screen, and will fit nicely into smaller hands.

Also on Thursday, Facebook is hosting a supersecret event, where it might unveil its answer to Twitter’s Vine: Instagram videos. What do you think? Is Facebook just being a copycat, or is it really onto something here? Leave a comment below and let me know your thoughts.

Thanks for watching, and check out Rumor Has It’s new YouTube channel.

Heard a tech rumor you think we should cover? Leave a comment below; ; send us a tweet (@karynelevy or @CNETRumorShow); or call and leave us a voice mail at 1-800-750-CNET.

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They may not be stylin’, but they are a privacy enhancement.

(Credit:
National Institute of Informatics)

Foiling facial recognition systems that identify people based on photographs may be as simple as wearing a special set of glasses equipped with near-infrared LEDs powered by a battery pack. The LEDs are arranged around the nose and eyes. The human eye can’t pick up the near-infrared, but a camera sees it as bright light, enough to obscure the face and confuse facial recognition software.

Researchers with the National Institute of Informatics and Kogakuin University in Japan developed the special privacy visor to counteract photographs and facial recognition software that could invade privacy. Details on the glasses were released late last year, but a prototype got a public showing at a recent open house.

In their current form, the glasses aren’t exactly high-fashion. They look more like safety goggles created for some long-lost retro “Tron” fan-movie and would make quite a stunning statement if paired with an anti-drone hoodie or burqa.

Though there’s been no word on when the glasses could see commercialization, eventually this technology could be shrunken down into a better-looking and more portable package. Still, the concept isn’t perfect. Some cameras aren’t affected by the near-infrared light, so the researchers are also looking into reflective material that could have a similar effect. The ultimate solution may involve a combination of technologies working together for privacy.

(Via DigInfo TV)

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